stared into a piece of the past he had never expected to find. He remembered the afternoon the photos had been taken as clearly as if it had been yesterday. It had been approximately two weeks before his father had disappeared. The weather had been hot and sultry and his dad had been home on leave, giving them snorkeling lessons and, when they’d pestered him, a lesson on underwater photography. Normally, they weren’t allowed to touch the camera, because it was an expensive piece of equipment and the shutter release was ultrasensitive.
In the next photo the luminous turquoise of pool water changed to cool blues and lilacs. Seawater. The absence of red and yellow tones in the coral indicated the depth as being from between forty to sixty feet, maybe a little more.
Through the murk he registered the focal point of the shot, the stern of a vessel and three numbers. The reason Monteith had kept the film, which should have been passed on to Eleanor Fischer, was now obvious. The numbers, remnants of Lloyd’s Register numbers, were familiar. Two years previously Steve had spent a few days in Costa Rica, chartered a launch and had found the wreck of the Nordika. Because of its remoteness, the site was not a popular dive location, but it was noted on the sea charts. He had dived on the wreck and had taken almost the exact same photo.
A set of prints depicting the cargo hold and the ancient diesels in the engine room followed. The sensation, as he flipped through the prints, was eerie as he viewed the same scenes he had photographed, only this time seen through his father’s eyes.
The next photo made the tension in the pit of his stomach escalate: a diver and, off to the side, the shadowy, encrusted shape of the Nordika’s hull. The final two snapshots were markedly different. The first was an off-center flash of a face distorted by a diving mask and a cloud of dark fluid—blood. The second, aimed upward, as if the camera had dropped to the sea bottom and the shutter mechanism had triggered, capturing the divers suspended above, one arching back as a spear punched into his shoulder.
Steve stared at the print. The snapshot was skewed, but the picture it had produced was sharp enough. He could make out the U.S. Navy marking on the wounded diver’s scuba tank, as well as the tattoo on Todd Fischer’s bare shoulder—the same tattoo that was visible in the holiday snap of his father sitting in the bottom of the Fischer family swimming pool.
For a split second the image of his father that he had “seen” more than twenty years before was superimposed over the print. He had never told his mother, or anyone, the full truth, that somehow in the last few seconds of his life Todd Fischer had reached out and connected with him. That he had experienced the moment of his father’s death.
The phenomenon had been singular and frightening. As the days following his father’s disappearance had passed and the search had continued, Steve had waited for news, aware that even if they did find his father it was too late. Todd Fischer had died on October 21, 1984, at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon.
The weeks of waiting for confirmation of what he had already known had burned deep. But just days after the funeral, when the press had published a leaked naval report citing Fischer and his men as deserters, Steve had been stunned. He had grown up with a number of calm certainties in his life. One of those had been that his father was a bona fide hero and a patriot. There was no way Todd Fischer would have deserted his family, his command or his country.
Shortly after the funeral, he had overheard his uncle discussing the fact that Todd had been working on something sensitive enough to hit a nerve with naval command, and the possibility of a cover-up. At eight years old, Steve hadn’t grasped the concepts of collateral damage and ex-pendability fully, but he had understood enough. Something had gone wrong and his father had been sacrificed. He could understand his father giving his life for his country—Todd Fischer had talked about that risk often enough—but he couldn’t accept that sacrifice going hand in glove with the disgrace of being labeled a traitor.
He hadn’t known all of the men who had died, but he had met some of them. They were mostly married with families. They hadn’t been any more expendable than his own father had been, and he was certain that in no way had justice been served.
Now, finally, he had proof. Instead of investigating the crime, Monteith, along with his personal staff, had covered the deaths up and walked out.
Extracting a notebook from his briefcase, Steve made a note of the personnel who had been involved, not only with the mission but with the reporting process, including the filing clerk who had authorized the closing of the Akidron file.
Maybe it was overkill, but Monteith, a decorated admiral, had been frightened enough by Hartley’s death to not only resign, but to commit an act of treason by concealing a threat to national security, and an indictable offense by concealing evidence of a mass murder. Steve could only put that fear down to two things. Monteith had obtained further information that wasn’t contained in the file, and he had been afraid for his own life.
Replacing the photographs and the negatives in the envelope, he slipped them into his briefcase along with the file, locked it and returned the remaining files to the front desk. After all these years the possibility that he could find his father’s remains was remote, but at least he had clarity on one point: Todd Fischer and the seven men under his command had been murdered while serving their country.
Frowning, the clerk counted the files, checked them against the register then recounted them. “Sir, there’s a file missing.”
He stared at the space Lieutenant Commander Fischer had occupied on the other side of the counter just seconds before. He was talking to air.
Fischer had already left.
* * *
Two days later Fischer walked into an interview room at the office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington, D.C., and handed a copy of the Akidron file to Rear Admiral Saunders. The only other occasion he had met Saunders had been at his father’s funeral, although he was well aware of Saunders’s career path. Since 1984, Saunders’s rise through the ranks had been swift, moving from commodore to rear admiral with a raft of commendations and honors for active service in the Gulf. Following a stint in naval intelligence reporting to the Joint Chiefs, his career had shifted to another level entirely when he had been head-hunted by the Director of National Intelligence.
Saunders invited Fischer to take a seat and opened the file. Minutes later he placed the photos that had accompanied the file in a neat pile beside the open folder. The photos were dated, numbered and indisputably had come from Todd Fischer’s underwater camera. The first four photos were family snaps, the next ten, working shots of the Nordika. The final three clearly depicted a murder in progress.
Saunders’s jaw tightened at the frozen violence of the last two photos. He had known Todd Fischer personally, and liked him. He had never found it easy to stomach the actions that had been necessary to keep Monteith’s Nazi-hunting junket under wraps. The fact that Monteith had gotten his men to the scene, recovered Todd Fischer’s camera and sealed away evidence that would not only have cleared Fischer and his men of all charges but sparked a murder inquiry, was an unpleasant shock.
The even more unpalatable fact that he now faced public exposure for his actions in the Nordika cover-up was a very personal and immediate threat. He reported to the Director of National Intelligence, who advised the president and oversaw the entire intelligence community. When it came to matters of national and international security, the slightest miscalculation on his part could cost him his job. “I presume you have the originals.”
Fischer’s gaze was remote. “And the negatives.”
Saunders steepled his fingers and studied Steve Fischer’s
